Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought

With the exhaustion of postcolonial studies, and following the historical turn in studies of European imperialism, the time is ripe for a more sharply historical consideration of the role of European legal thought in processes of colonial governance. Rather than recycling general theories of the ideological role of law in European colonization, the contributions to this volume focus on the historical interaction between law and politics in British colonial contexts in order to clarify how European legal doctrines and institutions were actually transmitted, negotiated and modified in the concrete circumstances of frontier polities.

Contents

PART I: EUROPEAN LAW AND GLOBAL JUSTICE * Global Justice and Regional Metaphysics: On the Critical History of the Law of Nature and Nations--Ian Hunter * Justice and Imperialism: On the Very Idea of a Universal Standard--Duncan Ivison * PART II: TRANSPOSITIONS OF EMPIRE * The Legalities of English Colonizing: Discourses of European Intrusion upon the Americas, ca. 1490-1830--Christopher Tomlins * “Your Sovereign and Our Father”: The Imperial Crown and the Idea of Legal-Ethnohistory--Mark D. Walters * The Justification of King Leopold II’s Congo Enterprise by Sir Travers Twiss--Andrew Fitzmaurice * The Uses of the Rule of Law in British Colonial Societies in the Nineteenth Century--John McLaren * PART III: FRONTIERS OF JUSTICE * Samuel Marsden’s Civility: The Transposition of Anglican Civil Authority to Australasia--Andrew Sharp * The Limits of Jurisdiction: Law, Governance and Indigenous Peoples in Colonized Australia--Mark Finnane * The Pig and the Peace: Transposing Order in Early Sydney--Lisa Ford * William Pember Reeves (1857-1932): Lawyer-Politician, Historian and “Rough Architect” of the New Zealand State--P. G. McHugh * PART IV: THE CROWN IN COLONIAL NEW ZEALAND * Sovereignty as Governance in the Early New Zealand Crown Colony Period--Shaunnagh Dorsett * Imperial Policy, Colonial Government and Indigenous Testimony in South Australia and New Zealand in the 1840s--Damen Ward * Law and Politics in the Constitutional Delineation of Indigenous Property Rights in 1840s New Zealand--Mark Hickford